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Cook, Arthur B.
Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes — Cambridge, 1940

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14698#0987

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The cult of meteorites

lying there, a big one to be sure, yet little or nothing in comparison with the
fiery mass observed in the sky.'

Plutarch1 states that the great stone was still shown in his day by
the dwellers in the Chersonese, who held it in reverence, and adds
that Anaxagoras had predicted the possibility of a fixed star
becoming loosened and falling to earth as a heavy stone. Pliny2
improves on this: Anaxagoras in 467/6 B.C. had predicted the
days within which a stone would fall from the sun,
a prediction fulfilled when this burnt-looking stone,
a waggon-load in size, fell in the daytime at Aigos
Potamos. Both Aristotle3 and Pliny4 remark that
there was also a comet shining in the night at

that time. Pliny5 goes on to mention that in the ~

. Fig- 720.

gymnasium at Abydos another aerolite was wor-
shipped. It was a smallish stone, but Anaxagoras was said to have
predicted that it would fall in the middle of the earth. Yet another
was worshipped at Kassandreia, the ancient Potidaia, which had
been founded on the spot where it fell. Pliny6 concludes by in-
forming us that he had himself seen such a stone which had
recently fallen in the territory of the Vocontii, a tribe of Gallia
Narbonensis. One other incident of the sort is on record. Kedrenos7
the Byzantine annalist notes that in the year 460 A.D. three huge
stones fell from the sky in Thrace and Eudokia wife of Theodosios ii
died at Jerusalem.

1 Plout. v. Lys. 12. if.

2 Plin. nat. hist. 2. 149. The marm. Par. ep. 57 p. 17 Jacoby notes the yea(
468/7 B.C. d.0' ou ev Aiybs woTa.fj.ols 6 X£e?os lirto-e. Cp. Silenos of Kaleakte(?) frag. <>
(Frag. hist. Gr. iii. loo ~isl\iVie.x)=frag. i (Frag.gr. Hist. ii. 900 Jacoby) ap. Diog. Laert-
2. 11, Aet. 2. 13. 9 (Plout. de plac. phil. 1. 13, Stob. eel. 1. 74. id p. 202, 14'¥?
Wachsmuth, Theodoret. 4. 18) in H. Diels Doxographi Graeci Berolini 1879 p- 34*-
Amm. Marc. 22. 8. 5, 22. 16. 22, Hieron. in Euseb. ami. Abr. 1551 ( = 466 B.C.), Lyd-
de ostent. 7 p. 14, 15 ff. Wachsmuth.

Bronze coins of Aigos Potamos, struck in the fourth century B.C., occasionally sh°vV
a star beneath the goat which forms their reverse type (Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Tne
Tauric Chersonese, etc. p. 187 no. 4. My fig. 720 is from a cast of this specimen kindly
supplied by Mr H. Mattingly). The said star very possibly represents the fam°uS
meteorite.

3 Aristot. meteor. 1. 7 344 b 31 ff. 4 Plin. nat. hist. 2. 149. ^
6 Plin. nat. hist. 2. 150. Cp. Lyd. de ostent. 7 p. 14, 20 ff. Wachsmuth to.\ito

tovto Kara re"Afiudov /cat Ktifatcov avfifiypal (prjo'iv 'A7rou\7jtos * '68iv £ti teal vvv ^
Trap aOrols Trvp&Sijs iitv to xp&^a, o~tbypip 5^ atras ko.to.aea'qiiao'ii&os' irapabeb'bo~d&L "Y^
\670s KufiKTjpoZs d>s o-vvcnro\tcr0ai r£ \l9(p tt)v irb\iv a.vayK-q. This curious tradition is n° '

I think, mentioned in F. W. Hasluck's Cyzicus Cambridge 1910.

6 Plin. nat. hist. 2. 150. Cp. Lyd. de ostent. 7 p. 15, 3 ff. Wachsmuth.

7 Kedren. hist. comp. 346 B—c (i. 607 Bekker).
 
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